


Withering Regrets.

by One_Real_Imonkey



Series: Twisted Memories AU [21]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: CT-5597 | Jesse Lives, Clone Trooper Inhibitor Chips (Star Wars), Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Good Parent Jango Fett, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hurt CT-5597 | Jesse, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicidal Thoughts, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mand'alor Jango Fett, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Order 66 Happened Differently (Star Wars), Post-Order 66 (Star Wars), Protective Jango Fett, Recovery, Self-Destruction, Self-Worth Issues, Siege of Mandalore (Star Wars), Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, as usual, dark one - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29668119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/One_Real_Imonkey/pseuds/One_Real_Imonkey
Summary: Order 66 has come and gone.The surviving Jedi have flocked to Mandalore with the free Vode and Jango's rescued Pamdé and her ade.In the calm he finally notices how reclusive Jesse's becoming, and he's not risking loosing anyone else.
Relationships: CT-5597 | Jesse & Darth Maul, Jango Fett & CT-5597 | Jesse, Jango Fett & Clone Troopers, Jango Fett/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: Twisted Memories AU [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2146377
Comments: 10
Kudos: 137





	Withering Regrets.

**Author's Note:**

> Back to the Darker Timeline.  
> OOPS.  
> Also, I haven't written the rescue yet, and with how my muse is, I don't know when I will, so just know that Padmé and the twins are on Mandalore and safe.  
> I don't own Star Wars.  
> Please enjoy.

Jango noticed Jesse was missing quickly.

Since returning with Padmé, and little Luke and Leia, Rex had stuck to Ahsoka and Boba like glue, but Jesse had been far more withdrawn. He'd spent a lot of time with Haat’ad, planning rescue missions for his brothers, but he hadn’t gone near his own vode if he could avoid it.

More than anyone, he’d been avoiding Ahsoka.

Jango was pretty sure he knew why, and he hated it. Hated it because they’d discovered the chips, they’d ordered them be removed, but there was simply no way for them all to have been removed in the time between discovering them and when they went active, and Jesse, Ahsoka, Rex, the whole 332 nd , they’d been comm silent. They hadn’t even known about the chips.

He'd lost all but one of his brothers in their battalion.

And worse, Jesse and Rex had both been under the chip’s influence. Kix didn’t think it had caused any adverse effects in their  long-term brain chemistry, but they had been under  its influence. They'd been ordered to murder their  vod .

He'd seen many of the  vode dealing with the same guilt, and too many of them hadn’t save their Jedi, though he supposed one Jedi or an entire battalion, which loss could hurt more? Either way, high death toll or low, they were all going through the same thing.

He understood why Jesse was distancing himself, understood that he needed time, understood that his  vode were helping, and chose to step back, trusting the  vode would be able to look after their own and understanding that they didn’t necessarily want him  interfering . But he was keeping an eye on the situation constantly, and if things got worse, he would step in.

So, when Jesse didn’t even join them for breakfast as he had been, he decided enough was enough and went hunting, and found his ad in the hall near his room, shaking and curled up on the floor.

He sank down the wall next to his ad. 

“Jesse?”

Jesse jumped in place, head shooting up to reveal the tear tracks Jango had suspected.

“Buir? I’m sorry, I just...”

“You want to talk about it?”

“I can’t get the images out of my head, Buir. I was so definite that I had to kill Ahsoka, I would have done it, I wouldn’t have cared. I'd have been pleased, proud, vindicated. I was a threat.”

“You got your chip out, Jesse.”

“Not fast enough. Not before my choices got all my brothers on the ship killed. I destroyed the escape pods to stop Rex and Ashoka escaping, and I wasn’t expecting Maul to destroy the hyperdrives, but I wasn’t thinking, I would have died if I hadn’t been close enough for them to grab me as we fell. They didn’t get it out until just before you arrived, Buir, just before. The first time I woke, they hadn’t recovered the med-droid, well, Rex was not in camp because he’d gone for it and... I woke and I saw her and I had to follow orders. I... I stabbed Ahsoka in the shoulder. It would have been the neck if she hadn’t managed to dodge and then I had her pinned, and my hands on her throat, and if Rex hadn’t stunned me... I can’t... I can’t get it out of my head. She was dying Buir, and I didn’t care.”

He wrapped his arms around his ad and pulled him close.

“It wasn’t you, Jesse. Believe me, I understand, and I know it’s going to take time to come to grips with, but it wasn’t you. I'll say it as many times as I need to.”

“I just... I failed her twice in a week. First with Maul, then with the chip.”

“Maul? What happened with Maul?”

Jango knew the shabuir had been on Mandalore, had rallied Death Watch clans and had been camped somewhere in the city of Sundari. That was why Ahsoka had returned with the 332 nd , with Rex and Jesse. The bastard had been there for his  riduur , another part of his relentless hunt to murder Jango’s  cyare . He’d avoided death at every turn, no matter how hard he and Obi tried.

He'd been hesitant about sending them, but their reports had said they’d been ok, that they’d caught Maul. He wished he’d been able to actually talk with them, rather than listen to a pre-recorded report, to tell them about the chips, to just see his ade alive and well and...

Maul who’d brought down the ship and killed the rest of their  vode in the 332 nd .

Was that it?

“He... he was hiding in the undercity, in the tunnels. Vaughn and I, we were taking a squadron after some  Kyr’tsad and we found them. They, Buir they killed the others, the whole squad, one by one, but not me, he didn’t kill me, he took me, left me alive and took me. He took me to his base, I couldn’t fight, they dragged me there, held me up, I was stripped of my armour, he... he... he went into my head Buir, wanted to know about Ahsoka. I couldn’t keep him out, I couldn't stop him, he just took what he wanted, tore through everything. It hurt; it still hurts.”

Jesse's final words were almost too soft to catch, but he did catch them.

Still? Still hurts? It had been two weeks since they’d left Sundari, more, and at least that since Maul had hurt him, oh his poor ad’ika. He remembered well enough being stripped of his armour and having someone tear through his mind, oh his poor child.

“Oh  ad’ika , why didn’t you say something? We have  baar’ur who can help with that.”

“I betrayed her, twice. I gave Maul everything, and maybe he knew about the chips, I don’t know why else he’d let me go, I thought he was going to kill me, he had me kneeling by the side of his throne in Sundari’s halls, I thought he was going to execute me when they arrived, but he let me go, let me go back to them and I lived and Ahsoka defeated him and I thought everything would be ok, and then I tried to murder her. I... this pain... maybe I...”

Oh. Oh no.

“You do not deserve it and don’t you dare say it.”

“But I do.”

Kriff , he had not gone to the  baar’ur because he felt he deserved it? They'd been busy, but not so busy that his injuries wouldn’t have been assessed, looked at. They had doctors who specialised in dealing with Force mind invasions, the  Jetiise and  dar’Jetiise had been their enemies for a long time after all. Hells, how had he missed this?

“A  Sith got into your head, and it rummaged around, and it took what it wanted. Jesse, I know how that feels, and it’s the worst thing in the world, but it wasn’t your fault.”

“But when you were on Kamino, you said you didn’t want to do those things, that there was a part of you always questioning it, always protesting. Not strong enough to stop anything, but it was there. I didn’t have that when the chip went off, I genuinely wanted her dead, Buir. I didn’t fight it.”

“But you  fought Maul?”

“Of course.”

“Thats because the chips were not a person in your head, messing with it. They were chips, messing with brain chemicals. Jesse, they took the part of your brain that processes thoughts and hijacked it, and they reduced all the chemicals that make you feel things like happiness or sadness so you couldn’t feel them. That's not the same.”

“How can she bare to be near me? How isn’t she scared to be near me, I nearly killed her, I tried to, I wanted to.”

“Because she knows it wasn’t you. And Jetiise, they can feel people. Feel their minds and emotions and all that. The chip took your emotions, your control, the things that make up your soul for them, don’t you think she’d have felt them all just vanish? Don't you think she can tell the difference between the brother she loves who loves her, and the empty emotionless shell the chip tried to make you?”

“It’s still my face.”

“ Jetiise don’t need faces to know people, Jesse. She knows her brother’s Force signature, she knows you, and she knows that the person who attacked her, wasn’t  you. ”

Jesse shuddered and sobbed into Jango’s shoulder.

“It’s ok,  ad’ika . It's going  to be ok.”

“It hurts Buir.”

“I know. It's time I get you  to medical,  ad’ika .”

“Ok, Buir. Ok.”

He scooped his ad into his arms, glad he had the strength to carry them when they were adults but he’d carried larger  verde than his ade. 

His  ad’ika had been tortured, tortured and he hadn’t said anything. He'd been stripped of his armour and someone had riffled though his brain and  kriff if Jango couldn’t remember how that felt, vividly.

Not just the pain of the intrusion, but the horror at every mental millimetre you gave, every little  thing they did to turn you or use against your  aliit .

It was agonising in a way no other pain could be.

Well, not for much longer.

He was going to get Jesse the help he needed, he was going to protect his aliit.

He would not fail  again. 

He couldn’t fail again.

**Author's Note:**

> Mando'a:  
> Haat'ad- True Mandalorians.  
> Vode- siblings/clones  
> vod- sibling/brother/sister  
> Buir-parent  
> ad- child  
> shabuir- bastard  
> riduur- spouse  
> cyare- beloved  
> ade- children  
> Kyr'tsad- Death Watch  
> ad'ika- little child (affectionate)  
> baar'ur- doctor  
> Jetiise- Jedi (plural)  
> Dar'jetiise- Sith/darksiders (plural)  
> verde- soldiers  
> aliit- family/clan
> 
> Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed.  
> This will likely be the last daily update, because this is the last thing I have finished, but this AU isn't done yet. I have lots more ideas to add and things I want to put in.  
> My Tumblr is One_Real_Imonkey.  
> Please R+R.


End file.
